Greg Laurie and Harvest Ministries recommend a great new children's book by Sally Lloyd-Jones called Jesus Our True Friend. You have kids and they need to hear the story of Jesus. And I bet you struggle at times trying to read Bible stories to your children. This is a great tool, so order your copy of Jesus Our True Friend Stories to Fill Your Heart with Joy, written by Sally Lloyd-Jones. Yours for a gift of any amount at harvest.org.
Welcome. Welcome to the first kickoff event for the Make Heaven Crowded Tour. Isn't that great? My name is Greg Laurie. I'm the pastor here at Harvest.
We've been around for around 50 years. And We're so glad. We're so glad that you're here with us tonight. Let me take a quick poll. How many of you attend this church?
Raise your hand.
Okay, a lot of you. A lot of you. How many of you are here for the first time ever? Raise your hand.
Okay, welcome. How many of you are pastors? Do we have any pastors out there? There's a bunch over there. God bless you.
How many of you are under the age of 21? Raise your hand up. Oh, I'm glad to see you. How many of you wish you were still under the age of 21? How many of you are tired of raising your hand?
Okay, so.
Well, this is going to be an amazing night. Uh when we were contacted by the folks over at um A TP Faith. TP Faith is an organization that does a lot of amazing things and of course it was started by A very special man, Charlie Kirk. I was just talking to Erica, Charlie's wife, a few moments ago, and I said, Erica, tell me the origin. of this phrase, make heaven crowded.
And it was something that he would say to her often: let's make heaven crowded. The objective of the event. Thank you. The reason we're here tonight. as we want to encourage you in your faith.
We want to pray for a revival, a spiritual awakening in America, and we want to encourage you all who are Christians to preach the gospel. And we want to say to you who are not believers yet, believe in Jesus Christ. That's our message tonight.
So I was seventeen years old. A brand new believer. I heard the pastor say, you need to go out and talk to people about Jesus Christ. And I thought, well, I've been a believer now for three weeks, I know a lot of stuff.
Well, I knew more than I used to know, but So I was out on the beach in Newport Beach, and I was going to talk to somebody about Christ. I had a little booklet that was very popular back in those days that we called the Jesus Revolution. They made a movie about it. Maybe you saw Jesus Revolution. Yeah.
Yeah. I had this little booklet called The Four Spiritual Laws. It was so new to me, I hadn't even memorized the contents of it yet. But I found this middle-aged lady sitting on the beach, and I walked up to her. My hair was in my eyes.
Use your imagination. I said, excuse me, can I talk to you about God? She said, sure. I sat down. I literally just was reading the booklet, The Four Spiritual Laws, Copyright 1964, Campus Crusade for Christ.
Law one, God loves you. Law two, you've sinned. I'm just reading through it and I'm thinking, you know, this is not going to work. What am I doing? This is crazy.
And I'm almost done. I was glad I was almost done. I wanted it to be over with so I could just say, I talked to someone about Jesus. I was planning for failure, not success.
So there's this one little question in the booklet that you ask the person, or read it if you're reading it. And the question is: is there any good reason why you should not accept Jesus Christ right now?
So I read that to her and I realized, oh, it's a question. I looked up. She said, no.
Okay, look down. Wait. Does that mean you want to accept Jesus Christ right now? She said, yes, I thought. I'm not ready for this.
But I saw the pastor say, let's bow our heads or a word of prayer.
So I did that. Let's print. Just pray. Close your eyes. And I'm frantically searching this book.
Like, what do I do now? I found this little prayer. I led her in this prayer to ask Christ to come into your life. And when she was done, She said, wow, something just happened to me. And I said, yeah, something happened to me too.
I realized that God could use someone like me, regardless of how little I knew. And God can use you too.
So I want to talk to you about the who, the where, the why, and the when of sharing the gospel. We know the command of Jesus. We call it the great commission. He says, go into all the world and preach the gospel, making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you even to the end of the age.
We've read that. And by the way, in the original language, that's a command.
So who is supposed to do it?
Well, we all are supposed to do it.
Okay, all of us are supposed to. Those words are addressed to pastors and to missionaries and to students and to housewives and to people that swiddle over equipment at the gym, like Lucas was talking about. To you name it, it's to all of us.
Okay, question number two: where are we to preach the gospel? Where? Everywhere. Go into all the world. Let me personalize it.
Go into all of your world. See, you have a sphere of influence. Could be your social media. Could be the people in your neighborhood. It could be just your friends.
You have people that you influence. I like to call it frangelism. No, that doesn't mean just evangelize people named Fran. FREN is an acronym for evangelize your friends, evangelize your relatives, evangelize your associates, and evangelize your neighbors. That pretty much covers everyone.
We're to preach the gospel everywhere. You know, sometimes people say, I want to be used by God. I want to cross the sea and be a missionary for Christ. Hey, why don't you start by crossing the street? Right?
And talk to your neighbor. Why are we to do this? Why? Because God's primary way of reaching people is through people. And the Bible asks the question: how will they hear unless someone tells them?
I mean, we make recommendations all the time, right? Oh, I just had the killer burger. You gotta go here for the killer burger. Oh, I just saw an amazing movie on Netflix. You gotta watch this movie or stream this series.
Oh, I just heard the most incredible song. You gotta download this song. We'll talk all day long about all these things and we'll go out and yelp and look at the opinions of complete strangers before we decide where we're gonna eat dinner, right? But then when someone says, go preach the gospel, we say, are you insane?
Okay, well, let me use a different word. Go into all the world and recommend the gospel. You can recommend a burger, you can recommend a movie, you can recommend something else. Can't you recommend Jesus Christ who has changed your life? You can.
Charlie Kirk said, and I quote, if I'm going to be known for something, I want to be known for being courageous for my faith. Right? So, when are we to preach the gospel? Answer: all the time. All the time.
The Bible says be instant in season and out of season. Or, as another translation puts it, be on duty at all times.
Okay, so.
Once I had to go to the bathroom. Yes, preachers go to the bathroom too.
So I was in the department store and I went into the restroom and I Try not to visualize this, please, but I took my seat in the stall, right?
So I'm sitting there. And by the way, when guys go to bathrooms, our objective is to get in and out as quickly as possible. It's not a social occasion like it is for girls. One girl will say, You want to go to the bathroom with me? Yes, let's all go.
They all go together. This mystifies man like what are you doing? If one guy sees another guy he knows on the bathroom, it's like, how's it? I don't want to shake your hand either.
So anyway, I'm in the bathroom, I'm in the stall. And I hear a person in the stall next to me clear their throat.
Okay, person next to me. A few moments go by and I hear this. Hi. Here's what I did. I went.
Hi, like Why is this dude talking to me? I don't talk to people in bathrooms. A moment passes and he says, Were you supposed to meet me here? No. No.
And then the thought occurred to me. What if this is a divine setup and God wants me to share the gospel? Cause then this guy asked me this question: Do you have something for me? What is going on with this guy? Go, what is it you want?
He says. I was gonna buy some drugs. Oh, okay, okay. I said, buddy, I have something better for you than drugs. A personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
He says, Oh, I already tried that. Oh, really? You did? Oh, yeah. I went to church and everything.
I said, where did you go to church? He said, Harvest Christian Fellowship. I thought this is a divine setup. This is classic. I said, do you know who I am?
He said, no. I said, I'm Greg Laurie, the pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship. And then he said, Oh my god. I said, buddy, God must really love you to send your pastor into a bathroom. When you're trying to do a drug buy, I said, look, I'm done with this.
I'll see you outside. I'm done with this bathroom evangelism. And so I'm waiting outside of the bathroom. He was easy to spot. He was the guilty-looking guy.
And I prayed with that guy, and he recommitted his life to Jesus Christ.
So you never know. You never know.
Now, here's the big question. How are we to share the gospel? How? This is where the rubber meets the road and where it falls apart for a lot of people. And we have no better example on how to do it than Jesus Christ Himself in a story.
In John chapter 4, where Jesus engages someone we call the woman at the well. We see how he built a bridge to her, how he engaged her, because the objective in evangelism is not to burn the bridge, it's to build the bridge, right? And Jesus does an amazing job of this. And this woman, had been married and divorced five times. and she was living with the man at present.
Uh And she reminds me of my mother who was married and divorced seven times. I met a man a little bit earlier tonight, a pastor. And he said, I came and heard you when I was 13 years old when you were having a harvest crusade in San Diego. I said, Really? He said, Yes, I was not a believer, but when you said your mother had been married and divorced seven times, I couldn't believe it because my mother had been married and divorced seven times.
And he said, Finally, I found someone who understands me. And I felt there was hope for me. And now he's not only a Christian, but he's serving as a pastor.
So that's, you know, great. But this woman married and divorced five times. The story in Jump Four says. Verse 3, Jesus left Judea, departed again to Galilee. But he needed to go through Samaria, and he came to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.
And Jacob's well was there. Jesus was tired from his journey. It was 12 noon. And a woman of Samaria came to drink water, and Jesus said, Give me a drink. And the woman of Samaria said, How is it that you, being a Jew, ask for a drink of water from me, a Samaritan woman?
Don't you know that Jews have no dealings with Samaritans? Jesus answered and said, If you knew the gift of God and who it is that says to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.
Now here's what I find amazing. It says he needed to go. Through Samaria. Why? Actually, he didn't need to go there at all.
It was way out of his way. Jesus was a Jew. The Samaritans and the Jews, well, they didn't get along very well. And so you would have to go out of your way to go through Samaria, but he needed to go through Samaria because it was a burned out woman who needed to hear the gospel. And sometimes God will call us to go to people we would not necessarily be comfortable going to.
We have to leave our comfort zone. God called Jonah. To go preach to the people of Nineveh, who were the avowed enemies of Israel. And Jonah wanted nothing to do with it because he was afraid that if he preached there, the people would turn to God. and God would spare them, and he would have preferred if God just judged them.
And so he disobeyed the Lord and got in a boat going in the opposite direction. God said, go. Jonas said, no. God said, oh. God always has the last word.
Well you know the rest of their stories swallowed by a great fish And there in the belly of the beast, he repented and turned back to God. And he was barfed on the shore of Nineveh.
So he was righteous and wrathed. He was blessed and he was barfed. He was victorious and he was vomited.
So there he was. And he went and preached to the people, and they believed. Speaking of my mother's husbands, the last guy she was married to.
Well, let's just say I didn't get along with him real well. And someone told me, hey, Craig Bill, what's his name? He's really sick. In fact, he's going to die. You should go visit him.
And I said, oh, okay, thanks for telling me. And I was on my way to go to some event and preach the gospel. And I said, I didn't want to go talk to Bill, and I'm driving to the airport, and God's Holy Spirit spoke to me as clear as day and said, go talk to him right now.
So I did a U-turn, I went over to the house, I walked in. He's there in a hospital bed. And I could see he was not long for this earth. And I sat down and I said, Bill, I know we always didn't get along that well, but let me just tell you about Jesus one more time. And I shared the gospel and I said, Would you like to accept Jesus Christ now?
And he said, Yes. And I prayed with him.
So I was glad I did it. I was able to still catch my flight. I landed and I pulled my phone out to check my text. And the first text that came up said, Bill just died. I was so glad I went.
Folks, there are people that you know. They can be your mom. They can be your dad. They can be one of your mother's many husbands. They can be a friend.
They can be people that you've met. And they might be right on the brink of entering the afterlife. You want to give them the gospel. We need to go to these people and engage them and do it tactfully. I love how Jesus was tactful with this woman.
You know, he actually entered her world. Hey, could I get a drink of water? What are you talking about? Why do you want a drink of water from me? Don't you know we don't even normally talk to each other?
Hey, if you knew who you were talking to, you would ask him and he would give you living water. What are you talking about, living water? He engaged her. He engaged her. I think a lot of times when we try to share our faith, people don't even understand what we're saying because we speak in what I call Christianese.
I'll say things like Hey you, uncircumcised Philistine, come here. Um I have a question for you. Have you repented? Have you been redeemed? Are you washed in the blood?
And are you part of the body of Christ? They're like, what? You want me to get washed in blood and get in someone's body? What are you even talking about? You got to put it in everyday English so they can understand.
Christ listened to her, he spoke to her, and he engaged her, and he built a bridge to her. He entered her world, as I said. Effectively, he's saying, Look, let me use this well. that you're sitting at. If you drink of the water of this well, you'll thirst again.
Effectively saying, I know that you think men are going to fill the void in your life. And I'm telling you, they won't. And we could broaden this to everything.
Some people think drugs will fill the void.
Some people think sex will fill the void.
Some people think success will fill the void. Others think an education will fill the void. Others think more followers on social media will fill the void. Only Christ can fill that hole in your heart. He's the one you're looking for.
So, an amazing thing she begins to understand. And she begins to connect. And then she says, You know, I believe that Messiah is coming. And when he comes, he will tell us all things. Jesus basically says, Girl, you're talking to him.
I'm the Messiah. I'm the one you're looking for. And right there on the spot, she believes and she goes into town and tells her story. John 4, 28 says, the woman left her water pot, went her way into the city and said to the man, come see a man that told me all the things I ever did. Could this be the Christ?
You know how long it takes to become a Christian? It doesn't take years. It doesn't take months. It doesn't take weeks. It doesn't take days.
It doesn't take hours. It can happen just like that. Will you just believe? And I remember for me when I came to Christ. I was going the wrong way in life.
I was using drugs. I was away from God. I knew nothing about God. But I heard the gospel. I heard just a little bit that made sense to me where the preacher said, Jesus said, You're either for me or against me.
And I looked at the Christians and I said, Well, I'm not one of them. Does that mean I'm against Jesus? I mean, I've always admired Jesus. I'd seen all of his movies. He was my God of choice when I was in trouble, but I never knew I could have a relationship with him.
And then that preacher named Lonnie Frisbee, if you saw the movie, said, if you want Jesus to come into your life, get up and walk forward and pray. And next thing I knew, I was up there praying. And that was the day that Christ came into my life, and my life was changed. Let me come back to my mom. Married and divorced seven times.
And even after I became a Christian, she wanted nothing to do with it, though she was raised in the church. though she knew these things from her childhood. And one day the Lord spoke to my heart and said, go talk to your mother. about me and that was always hard. It's hard to talk to your parents, right?
And every time I would bring this subject up, her default answer was: I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it.
So I showed up at her house. She's like, Craig, what are you doing here? Ironically, the same house where I led her husband to the Lord a few years later. Same house. Walk in.
Why are you here? I said, I'm here to talk to you about your soul. She said, I don't want to talk about it. I said, today we're going to talk about it. And we did.
And the result was. She believed in Jesus Christ.
So don't give up on your parents, don't give up on your children. Don't give up. On your friends, because God wants to use you. And I want to close with this simple thing. Have you asked Jesus to come into your life yet?
You can know all about Jesus and not know him. But Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came to this planet of ours on a rescue mission. He was born in a manger in Bethlehem. He lived a perfect life. He died a perfect death.
He rose again from the dead, and now he stands at the door of your life, and he knocks, and he says, If you'll hear my voice and open the door, I will come in. And my question to you is: Have you asked Christ to come into your life? They say, well, I'm from a Christian home. That's nice. I've been to church.
Well, that's nice too, but going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to. Krispy cream donuts makes you a cop. All the cops are like, what? Yeah. I'm just kidding, officer.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. We have a few fine officers serving us tonight. Thank you.
I thought what better way to thank them than to mock them. But I have nothing but admiration for them. But here's my point. It has to happen inside of your heart where you say, God, I know I'm a sinner. Jesus, I'm sorry for my sin, and I ask you to come into my life.
And I want to give you an opportunity to do that right now. I was asked to do this at the end of the evening. I thought, no, I need to do this right now. We don't need to put this off.
So if you want your sin forgiven, If you want Christ to fill that big hole in your heart, If you want to know that when you die, you will go to heaven, I'm going to lead you in a prayer. And if you need Christ to come into your life, or if you're a prodigal son or daughter and you need to return to the Lord, you can do it right here, right now.
Okay, let's all bow our heads and pray, Father. Thank you for loving us so much that you sent Jesus. Lord Jesus, thank you for coming and laying your life down on that cross for our sin. And now I pray for every person that is here, every person that is watching on one of our campuses or is watching online. If they don't know you yet, let this be the moment they believe.
Let this be the moment they change their eternal address from hell to heaven. Help them to come to you now. Know what our heads are bowed? And our eyes are closed, and we're praying. If you want Jesus Christ to come into your life, If you want him to forgive you of your sin, If you want to go to heaven when you die, If you want to fill that hole in your heart and you want God to remove your guilt, if you're ready to say yes to Jesus Christ wherever you are, I want you to lift your hand up high where I can see it.
Raise your hand up high where I can see it. God bless you. Raise your hand up high. God bless you. God bless you all over the room.
Hands are going up. In some of our overflow areas, of course, I can't see your hand, but raise your hand as well. This is between you and God. Anybody else, raise your hand now. You want Jesus in your life.
Maybe we have some prodigal sons and daughters out there, and by that I mean.
someone that was raised in a Christian home. But you've gone back to the old life, or you've wandered away from your faith, and you want to return to the Lord, you raise your hand up, and let me pray for you. God bless you. Now I'm gonna ask every one of you that raised your hand. I want you to stand to your feet, and I'm going to lead you in a prayer of commitment to Christ.
Stand to your feet. Stand up, you heard me right. Others are standing. He won't be alone. Stand up.
Stand up. God bless you. Anybody else? Maybe you did not raise your hand, but you want Jesus to come into your life tonight. Stand up and let me lead you in this prayer.
You in the overflow area, stand up. You'll pray this prayer too. Stand up wherever you are. I'll wait one more moment. Anyone else?
Stand now. God bless you. All right, all of you that are standing. I want you to pray this prayer out loud after me. Again, as I pray, You pray this out loud after me, okay?
Pray this after me now, Lord Jesus. I know that I'm a sinner. But I know that you're the Savior. Who died on the cross for my sin? and rose again from the dead.
I'm sorry for my sin. I turn from it. I repent of it. And I choose to follow Jesus. From this night forward.
As my Savior and Lord. As my God and my friend. Thank you for hearing this prayer. In answering this prayer. In Jesus' name I pray.
Amen. Amen. God bless you. God bless you. Hey, everybody, thanks for listening to my podcast.
Before you go, I wanted to let you know about the important work we're doing here at Harvest. You know, we've had the same goal these last 50 years, which is simply this. We want to know God and we want to make Him known. And we do that in a lot of ways. Documentary films, animation, radio, television, large-scale evangelistic events, and more.
If you want to be a part of what we're doing to fulfill the great commission, you can support us with whatever you can give. At harvest.org slash donate. Again, that's harvest.org slash donate, and thanks so much.
